Politics of European Nations Moving From Right or Left Toward Center

PARIS—While the shift in politics of Western Europe, over the last year or two seems on the surface to support, American fears that Europe is going left, a closer look shows, a different, more mottled picture.

In places where social reformers have been in power for some time, such as West Genmany, Sweden and to a certain extent Britain, there is a move to the right in the sense that people want to stop and consider the costs, although not to uproot the reforms.

In countries where conservatives have long been in power and there has been relatively little or no social reform, such as France, Italy and the once deep‐frozen societies of Spain and Portugal, the pent‐up demands for reform are moving opinions leftward.

The leftward trend has led some to the impression that Moscow, or at least the Marxist vision of society, is making strategic gains over the Western traditions of Europe.

Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger has spoken of a new domino theory for Europe, risking the fall of Italy and France to Communist power and then the neutralization of West Germany. He reportedly told a group of Europeans that “all, Europe will be Marxist within a decade.”

Socialists won the largest number of votes at the last election in 10 of the 15 European countries that have regularly had free elections since the war, though they reached a majority only in Austria, with 50.4 percent. Socialists now have 54.1 percent (125 of 231) of Europe's cabinet posts compared with 33.5 percent (69 out of 206) in 1955.

There is a trend against classical capitalist economic patterns, but that has been in evidence for many years as modern industrial society gropes to adjust to new problems. But the trend is not necessarily Marxist, in the sense of requiring “public ownership of the means of production,” or class warfare between proletarians and others, And while it is not bringing more affection for America, it is definitely not a pro‐Soviet trend,

It can be argued, as many Europeans do, that Western Communist parties are moving to the right because they have seen that only by loosening tics with Moscow and endorsing democracy can they hope for any share of power. Portuguese Communists, who sought to ride to the top with a military coup, are seen by the important Italian and French Communist Parties as a glaring example of failure because they broke this rule.

Visits to the major European countries to put the question of whether Europe is going left and What that would mean produced a silhouette of societies intent on developing or strengthening democracy with a strong social content, fighting stagnation but resisting authoritarian, centralized models.

“Western Europe is more impenetrable to the Soviet Union than it has ever been,” said François Duchene, former director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and now professor of international relations at the University of Sussex.

“Europe did go left, but now it is moving back to the center again.” said Erich Blumenfeld, a veteran Christian Democratic member of the West German Parliament.

Sweden's Socialist Prime minister. Olof Palme, said: “We Socialists live in a symbiosis with capitalism. It is a period of capitalist weakness. At the worst, it could lead to the collapse of industrial society. But since we depend on industrial society, we must see that it develops.”

Alfred Fabre‐Luce, a prominent conservative French writer. said: “The theses of the left have been spreading since 1968. But everybody knows that the fate of workers isn't changed much by shifting from private to nationalized industry.”

Across Western Europe, politicians, officials and commentators of all shades of political faith point out that despite the most severe depression since the 1930's. with six million unemployed, there are no upheavals, no grave civil conflicts, no revolts.

The economy — unemployment and inflation—is the central issue everywhere. Governments are dealing more or less successfully with what is generally called “the crisis.” but no country, not even Britain or Italy, which are most troubled, emits the nervous panicky tremors that signal coming collapse of established systems.

There are, of course, considerable differences over what is meant by the left from person to person, place to place. time to time. A wealthy French antiques dealer, Pierre DurandRuel, expressed it in the traditional, romantic terms still used by many intellectuals but cast off by almost all European politicians: “The left means idealism and progress. The right means being practical and socially immobile.”

Everyone for Reform

Certainly, reform remains a dominant leftist idea, but it has been taken up almost across the political spectrum. The issues themselves have shifted leftward in a generation as societies move on from old problems to newer ones, but relations among political forces within the spectrum have not changed greatly.

Thus conservatives of such varied degree as Interior Minister Manuel Fraga Iri barne of Spain. President Valety Giscard d'Estaing of France and Kurt Biedenkopf, West Germany's Christian Democratic Opposition leader, have taken to including calls for “renewal” and “social justice” as a matter of course in stating their political aims.

Yet in the 15 countries that held regular elections, the overall vote change in the last 20 years shows a loss of about 1 percentage point for conservatives (from 38 percent to 36.9 percent), a gain of under percentage points for Socialists (from 29.5 percent to 31.2 percent), a gain of more than percentage points for liberals (from 7.9 percent to 10.7 percent) and a fractional slippage for Communists (from 10.5 percent to 10.2 percent).

The Economist of London. which collected these figures. found in analyzing them that the increase in Socialist voters may have reached high tide and may be starting to ebb.

More important, while some of Europe's Socialist parties consider themselves Marxist and others do not. all of them favor mixed economies of some sort, as do conservatives, though the mix varies widely. And all of them adamantly insist on political democracy with what have come to be called the “bourgeois freedoms.”

Current trends, reflected in polls and the judgment of politicians, show a general swelling of support for the outs against the ins. regardless of political labels. That does not mean that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, for example, faces ouster in this fall's election, but it does mean that he has moved toward the right. “He is trying to make himself look conservative,” said Mr. Biedenkopf, “because otherwise he knows he would lose.”

In France and Italy, where the left has long been in opposition, the tide of the outs is strengthening the left.

Spain and Portugal are still volatile countries in the grip of difficult political transition. Their abrupt emergence, along with Greece, into the arena of political mobility has led to images of “a Red tide sweeping the Mediterranean”—in the conservative view — or a “north‐south split across Europe”—in the Socialist view.

‘Red Tide’ Seems to Recede

The “Red tide,” if it ever existed considering the drastically differing circumstances in which different types of Communist parties have been bidding for power, appears to have receded. The areas of the south are in an earlier stage of industrialization than those of northern Europe, however, and they are passing through the more painful stages of transition from agricultural to industrial society, already largely completed in northern Europe, including northern Italy.

There also seems to be a vague political demarcation line between north and south, projected intently by the French Socialist leader, François Mitterrand, who has been advancing himself as cader of the “southerners.” These countries—France. Italy, Spain, Portugal—have sizable Communist parties and important Communist influence on labor unions, and their Socialist leaders see no way of achieving power or governing without some kind of alliance with the Conununists.

“Obviously,” said Prof. Stanley Hotfmann of Harvard, “without control of the unions, they couldn't hope to manage their economies.” Gilles Martinet, a French Socialist, put it slightly differently, arguing that a government of the left could not exist without a broad working‐class base and therefore must include Communists where they have important worker support.

In countries where reformers have not had a chance to move and shake for a long time, the left is moving toward power on the wave of demands to “catch up” with what are felt to be the equitable decencies of modern society.

David Howell, a British Member of Parliament who is a leading adviser on economics to the Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, reflects the new measure of what is generally considered “normal modern” social arrangements, although his own party has again come to proclaim the traditional Tory call against burdensome, bureaucratic government.

Britain's Conservatives, he said, “would settle for the European position on practically everything. tax rates, worker participation in enterprise, the normal Western mix of public and private sectors.”

In France, where the left has been making slow but steady gains and could win the next elections. in 1978, according to current polls, there is no capital‐gains tax, mimimal real — estate taxes and high value‐added tax, similar to sales tax.

Promoting Industrialization

Despite the supposed social content of de Gaulle's policies, which at one period drew much of the non‐Communist left as weil as the nationalist right to his banner, French reforms in the last 15 years have been to promote industrialization. production and technology.

The workers are clearly much better off. Large numbers have moved into what used to be the living style of the middle class. Cut a sense of social chasm persists, if not quite so doggedly as in Britain.

Probing the reason for the failure of the United States to develop a sturdy Europeanstyle Socialist party, Werner Sombart, a German, wrote in 1905 that it was because Americans felt no need of class solidarity to get ahead. They believed they could do it individually.

Roll Darhendorf, head of the London School of Economics. believes the perception also serves to explain the persistence of class feeling in Britain—despite probably more equality now in spendable income than in the Soviet Union —and in France, where there is a much greater gap in incomes but vastly improved living standards and a system of social security that is immensely more protective than in the United States.

No Italian Social Reform

In Italy there is a high degree of nationalization, including much of the credit system. Restraints on industry's ability to lay off workers are so severe that they have tended to dry up investment. But there has, in the words of one North Atlantic Treaty Organization ambassador. “been no social reform at all.”

“There is no place for the economically and socially weak to turn for protection against the strong, except the Mafia and the Communists,” the ambassador said.

The loss of economic growth has forced all Western Europe to look more searchingly at social structures. Virtually no one supposes any longer that more and more benefits can be creamed off the top of bubbling economies.

Surprisingly, while the rest of Europe talks about the direction of Italian politics, Italian politicians talk essentially about management, just making things work. The Communists have moved farther and fart her away from ideology and from Moscow to demonstrate their skills at management, and the voters have moved more and more to look upon them as the party of modernism and efficiency.

Ugo La Malfa, leader of the small but modern‐minded Republican Party, said: “If the Christian Democrats and Socialists don't change, they'll bring Italy to economic and social ruin. But the Communists could bring a loss of national independence. Everything would he fairly simple for us, and for the Italian Communists, if there weren't a Soviet Union.”

In the sense of opposing possible Soviet influence, foreign policy is an issue in Italy nom. and has to do with what people mean by “going left.” But only in that sense, and scarcely anywhere else outside of Italy and France.

The basic focus of Western Europe now is on its own societies and their economic and social structures. When they speak of going “left” and “right,” this is what most people mean, without bringing into question at all the fundamentals of either internal democracy or allegiance to the West.

Effect of Détente

“There's nothing wrong with the Second International (the Western Socialists), nothing at all, except the issue of defense,” said a very conservative American ambassador who has been closely watching what the European Socialists are doing. “They slight defense, not because they are against it. but because they put their priorities on social welfare and have to hold down spending somewhere.”

Perhaps it has to do with detente, a sense of lowered anger. Even the prominent Italian Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, who is opposed to bringing Communists into the national government, said, referring to the East‐West security conference in Finland last year: “I believe in Helsinki. For us it is a starting point.’

But it probably has still more to do with Europe's relatively recent introduction to postindustrial society and its people's sense of how to face this generation's problems.

“The talk about countries becoming ungovernable is nonsense,” said a ranking official of the West German Chancellery. “Our societies are much more governable, we have much more stability, where there is a willingness to make social progress, than in the dead ‘stability’ of a Spain or a Portugal under the dictatorships. That is really fragile.

“People mix up social progress, social security, with a leaning toward Communism. But it's just the opposite, it strengthens the democratic system. If this basis for European development isn't accepted, then we're in for real trouble.”

‘Mend the Stanchions’

The Economist of London, summing up last year. remembered that it had called for “courage” at the beginning of the year, “to mend the stanchions of Western life.”

“After a fashion, that is what happened,” it said. “So moderation has its chance between now and 1980. It matters very much that this chance should be taken, not squandered.”

That is the predominant tone in Western Europe these days. In traditional terms, it means moving leftward in some societies, and rightward—halting or diluting government paternalism — in others. Nowhere. however. does it mean looking to the Communist East or casting off from the American mooring of Western defense.

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A version of this archives appears in print on February 16, 1976, on Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Politics of European Nations Moving From Right or Left Toward Center. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe